@user400654 what did you think he said?

Still not quality feedback.

ok, what do you think quality feedback looks like, if not full comments?

Votes.

They're saying stop saying downvote are for disagreement.

for people who are too lazy to leave a comment

that's it

@user1306322 Oh, so now we're lazy.

@user1306322 Well no. First because I don't agree with animuson at all on that one, but also because he wasn't answering as an employee, he wasn't an employee at the time, just an SO mod.

it's not saying don't downvote without explaining

And the idea of requiring explanations for downvotes is a very, very bad one.

Come on. Just because you disagree doesn't mean you need to build a strawman.

I'm not the first to say people are lazy and choose to omit commenting when downvoting but I'll say it too, and I don't see anything bad with people here

it's the UX which doesn't make it simple to provide quality feedback quickly

Sure, being lazy is one reason. And it's a good one.

I don't have time to leave detailed explanations each time I downvote. And I actually am among the users who comment most often when downvoting. I will very, very often comment.

voting is low quality feedback, imo, the easiest way to generally say "mm yea" or "mm nah"

that's not actionable in any way

I don't want criticism of a post to be held to a higher standard than it's support.

@user1306322 It's not supposed to be.

It's never been meant to be.

when the question is closed, the text plaques at least give you some starting points on what to improve, if not how

@fbueckert and I don't blame the voting system here either!

But yeah, not always. And the main reason I do comment is because I don't really care about rep any more so I don't care if they come after me to retaliate. Plus, until recently I was a mod on the core sites I am active on which gave me another layer of protection. Most users don't have this and it gets really tiring when people come after you with revenge downvotes.

I blame the lack of any other, better options

@user1306322 It kinda sounds like you do.

@user1306322 I honestly don't see what could be better than a simple yes or no. Votes are great. The problem is that people take them personally.

it shouldn't be "all or nothing"

not just votes or full fledged comments

But, again, I don't see why criticsm needs to require more effort than support.

@terdon-stopharmingMonica yes, the problem is the people of course

These new "reaction" thingies might help, I dunno. Personally, I just don't know what any of them mean. So as feedback, they're less useful even than votes. But other people may feel differently.

Because people want to silence criticism

@user400654 I don't

Putting up barriers to providing it is exactly that

I use criticism as an instrument to improve what others have identified can be improved

if it is actionable, that is

But look, all of this is moot. We can discuss it till the cows come home, but it won't lead to anything.

if not, I can't use it

You can though.

how

*lowing in the distance*

Easy. If the post has 1000 downvotes and only 10 comments... you can pretty clearly see it's pretty disliked.

it doesn't need 1000 comments to express that

@terdon-stopharmingMonica I don't share that pessimism, sorry :p

@user1306322 Good for you! And I mean that sincerely.

@user400654 I'm not talking about extreme cases

Ok, 20.

same difference

no

just one downvote is enough to prompt you to ask yourself what is it that you did wrong

Then you're looking at downvotes as far more than what they are.

when it's not 20 or 1000, you don't know if your post is universally rejected and isn't likely to go anywhere

A downvote doesn't indicate that the problem can be fixed

and that is the abuse (or misuse) of the system, in my opinion

Lool

there should be another button to mean exactly that, in a couple clicks, just as easy as clicking that downvote arrow

@user1306322 sigh

Can we get away from the idea that criticism is toxic, hostile, abuse, whatever?

@fbueckert I never said or meant that anywhere

I am done having to explain that.

I only mean that it's not useful

Why can't a post be actively bad/not useful and also not fixable?

@user1306322 You said abuse. I read it as it was written.

sorry I'm not a native english speaker and I confuse similar words sometimes

please unread it as written :P

@user400654 it can, but then I'd like to know how/why it is bad and unfixable

it's hard if there are not comments or any other indicators of what exactly is bad about it

the problem I'm trying to solve here is making it much more likely that such information appears

and a way for that, I think, is to create new easy ways to express those thoughts

see every "Downvotes should require comments" post that happens multiple times a day. These people simply didn't research their problem before asking. It can't be fixed, but it's still not useful and poorly researched. No comment will help.

without putting up unnecessary reasons for concern or chilling effects like having your username next to it like in comments, as opposed to votes which are anonymous

@user1306322 Okay. And, again, why does criticism require more effort than support?

this is because we're stuck with this "we only have votes and comments" mindset

emojis that omit the ability to provide a negative reaction doesn't help.

@fbueckert neither requires effort, but it would be great if less effort was required

I'm not talking about primitive emojis, but more coherent reaction "thoughts" in text

similar to what you see in close plaques, but before the question is closed with all that comes with that status

@user1306322 Requiring comments adds an additional barrier.

Apply that to upvotes; is it reasonable?

I'm not saying comments are required anywhere

I'm saying we are not making it easy enough to "leave comments"

> it's hard if there are not comments or any other indicators of what exactly is bad about it

An emoji won't tell the user what is wrong with it.

@fbueckert again, never did I say I require comments

@user1306322 I'm saying it should also be applied to upvotes.

We need new arrows: ⟿ ⍼ ➫ eliminate the confusion.

Make users justify their support.

@user400654 again, never did I say emojis are enough information

What is?

You claim to not be suggesting requiring comments, so what are you suggesting?

Canned reasons?

imagine a way to basically add messages from the close plaques, anonymously

How many canned reasons should we have?

we have that already

yes, like canned close reasons but better

it's called a custom close reason.

we should have a lot then and make them easily clickable

then it wouldn't be custom

pin your favorites/ most frequently used to the top

Do you really want to add more ways for people to close questions?

Downvotes don't indicate the post needs to be closed.

some power users use custom scripts to post canned comments, I think regular users could use that as built-in functionality

@user400654 no?

I think said custom scripts and canned reponses are cold-hearted and often rude/unwelcoming

yes, I think so too, which is why I think they can be improved

Lol

No.

Just...no.

Apply the same reasoning to upvotes. Do you think it's reasonable?

what is?

asking users to explain why they considered the post worthy of upvoting?

Yes.

@πάνταῥεῖ to do what exactly? / for what goal

@user1306322 To explain their reasoning

Why do downvotes need them?

@fbueckert to let the poster know how they can improve their content

That's not what downvotes are for

Then upvotes need them to justify that the content is worthy.

If you're downvoting because the user can improve their post, you're abusing downvotes.

Is that a reasonable requirement for upvotes?

why are we circling back to feedback being a requirement for downvoting? I never said that myself

Because you keep suggesting it

@user1306322 You're literally advocating that downvotes should provide more feedback.

Upvote reasons for VLQ or off-topic questions often seem to be very confusing

I'm arguing that upvotes should provide that same amount of feedback. And asking you if you feel it's reasonable.

not as a requirement of any other action, I never said that

then stop talking about voting

lol

@user1306322 By requiring criticism to require more effort.

I never said that

You literally said that.

well they don't need them

that's what I also said

Are we arguing systematically enforced mandatory comments with downvotes or just proper etiquette?

in different ways

@Tinkeringbell I'm trying to find ways to make it easier for users to leave useful actionable responses when they have them, regardless of whether they vote or not

@Tinkeringbell honestly, it sounds like many people in this conversation are arguing about different things.

I suppose "downvotes require comments" is a very long standing thought which I am having a hard time distancing this discussion from

To be fair, that's an incredibly common argument.

yea, I got that impression over the last 30 minutes lol

@user1306322 Well, downvoting does give you a pop up to comment if you feel there's room for improvement. We've had several arguments about how it would be nice if people sometimes discussed the merit of a feature in answers instead of downvotes.... But that's behavioral, not really the way people seem to ask for the system to only let you downvotes when you also leave a comment.

so far I've identified that users are less likely to comment because their username is attached to the comment and that means a whole lot of things

And seems to be where much of the discussion has been centering.

that popup is incredibly frustrating

@user1306322 Now that's an interesting one...

@user1306322 Well, only if that should apply for upvotes and the comments left are as anonymous like the votes are.

But lots of the other aspects boil down to, "Criticism should require more effort".

And I'm going to oppose that. It's an extremely chilling effect.

maybe if we could add anonymous canned responses kinda like what the close plaque says, but before closing, it could be useful and users would be more likely to leave those without the attached baggage of having their username on it

@fbueckert It already does, rep/privilege wise, if I recall correctly

@user1306322 The system should provide said canned reponse for us.

yes

without us choosing it

it should be a couple clicks for the user, same as it is one easy click on the arrows

@Tinkeringbell Yeah. And while I'm not a fan, it's still an imbalance.

no, it shouldn't be more clicks

mm no, we'll have to put some effort into choosing the useful canned comment :p

I feel like that restriction has already skewed voting.

what restriction?

We've already tried canned comments for DV's at Stack overflow. It didn't help much.

@fbueckert post scores for sure, that's why we also have the anonymous feedback pages...

@user1306322 Downvoting answers takes 1 rep.

@πάνταῥεῖ were they any good?

@fbueckert was there any experiment on having it not penalize the downvoter?

Downvotes are already held to a higher standard (need higher rep, takes rep for answers).

We don't need criticism held to an even higher standard.

this is a whole different topic and I'd like to see stats on that

If anything, upvotes should be brought in line with downvotes.

@user1306322 Decide yourself please: idownvotedbecau.se

@user1306322 It started that way. The cost was added after the fact. Don't quite remember why.

see, I'm not talking about raising standards for criticism, if anything it's lowering them by picking one of the canned reasons, which are by default less precise than a hand-written comment

@user1306322 By requiring criticism to expend more effort.

Thereby receiving less of it.

It's not a lot of extra effort, but it is more.

not requiring, but allowing to spend less effort on picking a canned anonymous comment

how is it more effort?

If you have a helpful observation simply write a polite and clear comment explaining what the shortcomings are, without a down or up. If your critique is accurate and helpful others will upvote your comment. We had a first timer here earlier and I suggested that they document the bug (quickly before someone else did), they missed out some info and I simply commented - they fixed it and I deleted my comment; and upvoted. No one had to feel bad and they ended up with maximum rep for 2 days.

A happy customer.

@user1306322 it's less than writing your own, more than just leaving a downvote

@Tinkeringbell yes, thank you for coming to my ted talk

@user1306322 Apply the same requirement to upvotes. Doesn't it take more effort to have to select a reason why you're upvoting?

I'm not going to apply the same requirement to upvotes, why would I ever? Can you explain this part to me?

@user1306322 Because it highlights the disparity.

Because upvotes are abused jsut like downvotes are.

You want criticism to require more effort.

@user400654 how

^^^ ✔️

That skews votes.

@fbueckert no

People upvote incorrect answers for "helping" all the time.

@user1306322 so, fbueckert is saying that having to pick a canned comment (and enforcing that) will add another barrier to just downvoting.... While people do get to just upvote... So if people don't feel like dismissing three popups, they'll downvote even less

It means less people will criticize, because it's harder to do.

people upvote posts they're going to answer, by default, just to be nice.

is that clear?

@user1306322 Yes.

thank you

But you're not understanding the opposing argument.

but you're not proposing to remove low effort option, right?

ok

@user400654 no

just add the middle option

Any time you add another barrier to an action, that action will be performed less.

what barriers am I adding here

none

The canned response

in what way is it a barrier

no, if the canned response is optional, it's not a barrier

It's an additional action that must be performed.

Or dismissed.

@user400654 thank you for understanding me on this ted talk, it's been a tremendous night!

don't make it require being dismissed

it shouldn't pop up at all

@fbueckert who said it must be performed?

if they want to provide said optional reason, they should have to click to open up the ui for it.

who said it must be dismissed?

@user400654 This was tried.

aka, they can click "close"

@πάνταῥεῖ mentioned it.

and choose the close reason most appropriate

and the system will provide the appropriate canned response

oh, look

we have that already!

SE decided using them was unwelcoming, and banned them.

can we move on?

@user400654 That is already the case. If you want to comment on your vote, you can click on the comment button.

↬

I say to you right now: 1) there is no requirement to leave a middle-level effort response, and 2) there must not be an effort to dismiss any pop-up. Now, is my proposition still requiring more effort somewhere?

@user1306322 Then what's different than the system right now?

@Raedwald exactly my point

The optional bit right now is commenting.

Exactly as intended.

@fbueckert it allows you to optionally post an anonymous canned response which generally conveys your thoughts on how the post can be improved

@user400654 I believe those come mostly come from Reddit or Quora, believing this is a discussion forum, and they give kudos by pure empathy for the "poor noob " to give them a heads up.

comments include your username with all the risks that come with it

my proposition does not

I don't think that's a real problem that needs to be solved

@user1306322 Other than the anonymous bit, that's exactly what idownvotedbecau.se did.

but what if it was also anonymous?

Protip: it didn't really help, I think.

Making it anonymous doesn't change the efficacy.

Just removes the potential target.

why do people think it didn't help?

It wasn't specialized.

what if it was specialized?

How do you create canned comments that are specialized?

Seriously, check out the site.

It had quite a few reasons, so people linked to them to explain.

yea it's too general, those canned responses could be more precise

more options, I mean

are we going to have a list with 10k canned responses to filter through?

@user1306322 How many are there on the site?

not 10k you'd be surprised how few relevant ones would actually be needed

at most 200

...200.

200.

Who in their right mind is going to filter through 200 options?

@fbueckert 17?

My personal behavior of downvoting mostly follows my "closevote plague" anyways. I've been suspended too often, that I avoid comments coming along at all.

total! not on one screen!

What part of that doesn't require more effort?

tags should filter them out for you to give you top 20 to pick from

heh

so now we have to somehow tag canned responses

it's not just about requiring less effort, but making it more likely that users leave actionable feedback

so that they'll filter automatically by tag

if the option isn't there, that chance doesn't exist, but if they have something to choose from, someone might!

@user1306322 So, now we're back to criticism needing to put in more effort.

well, it's different effort though

So?

you don't have to touch the keyboard for this

It's still more effort.

More effort is more effort.

so it's making it more likely that users add useful responses!

downvoting is already a heavily hindered action.

if it's different, people will do it!

Why? Why am I required to put in more effort to help the poster?

you are not required to do anything!

I have clarified this many times already

Why can't I just signal that I don't think the post isn't useful, and move on?

@user1306322 You're expecting people to go through 20/200/whatever options to provide actionable feedback.

but if you had the option wouldn't you consider it if the other 2 options (vote or comment) weren't to your liking at the moment?

Making it optional will lead to one thing: nobody does it.

Thereby making the entire feature useless.

hmmmm you don't understand that a dv IS actionable feedback

@fbueckert you can do what you want to do, but it is a good idea to leave more options for others to choose from, whatever their reasoning may be (such as not wanting to have their username next to it or having to think of a precise reason, and picking the next best fitting one with a couple clicks instead)

As is a flag.

did you ever try reporting a post on facebook? it's ANNOYING because of all the separate steps. it's spam. duh. don't make it harder than necessary to report crap. i'd say downvotes on obvious garbage are the same: nobody wants to spend more time than necessary on garbage. clicking the downvote button is fast. writing a comment isn't. having to choose a justification isn't. so people would downvote less, which would reduce the overall quality on the site

@ThiefMaster I've never used a social media site like facebook, sorry

lol

then you're no longer important to the site

as you're an outlier.

@djsmiley2k-CoW I suppose I mean more actionable than a downvote

and we don't like those 'ere! <raises pitchfork>

lol

we could just delete it right away

therefore the action is write a better one

@user1306322 Why?

@ThiefMaster I can see the canned comments being useful in 1 case: when flagging VLQ/NAA it could be useful to have the flagger also already post one of the canned options if applicable.... Makes reviewing those a bit easier too as the queue had some indication of why it was flagged....

@Tinkeringbell I feel like those...sorta help? But often people just react badly to them.

I'm just not a fan of anonymous feedback

They feel it's too impersonal.

too easy to troll

sure as an optional feature that's great. i actually used the userscript to post canned comments for quite some time

@fbueckert That too

@fbueckert maybe you don't understand this or I can't explain in understandable terms, but if there are multiple options for leaving feedback with different levels of effort required, people will use them all in different situations

@user1306322 I understand. I'm challenging the perception that it will be useful.

I don't think it would be.

I'm betting that it will be used and it will be useful, and I want us to try it one day

@user1306322 Well, there are userscripts for canned comments... I suggest installing those ;)

maybe not on this platform

People already had feedback from idownvotedbecau.se; it was deemed not useful, or outright mean in some cases.

wtf is that for real?

When those that are trying to help posters get told that help isn't help, people aren't going to do it.

where can I look up discussions of cases where it wasn't useful and what people proposed about how to improve those canned responses?

meta?

I like @Glorfindel 's Saviour of lost Souls user script a lot. It allows you to provide several actions with a few clicks, optionally including a welcome message with useful information for the OP how to proceed.

links pls

What you're suggesting seems to basically put one of those into the system... I don't know if that's going to work, usually canned comments are great to quickly get e.g. a template and link to meta/help... But in the end, the friendliest ones at least seem to acknowledge having read the post by using language specific to it.

@πάνταῥεῖ is there a page with screenshots?

imo if you're going to leave any textual feedback at all, you should be required to actually type it out. it should be personal, and directly related to the post at hand.

canned comments aren't that.

so you're saying leave the 2 options

I'm saying add the 3rd

manually typed out anonymous comments?

I'm not interested in helping the poster, most of the time; my experience has been the vast majority don't action it, and there's been enough hostility that I don't feel it's worth my time.

@user400654 click-selected canned anonymous comments

those are canned

exactly what i'm against, for the reason i just gave, lol

@fbueckert For that last part, the anonymous bit is enticing but it also would allow being mean/targetting

@user1306322 SE sites are not about actionable feedback. Feedback is what you have if you are having a discussion, like on a forum. A down vote conveys precisely what is needed: a vote on the quality. The OP may take it as feedback. But that is not it's purpose. SO is so good precisely because it removed the idea that you must in any way have a discussion. Originally it did not have comments at all, I've been told.

@user400654 can I see some meta posts where it is discussed exactly in which situations they are bad?

@Tinkeringbell Yeah, but it doesn't solve the underlying problem; it's almost never actioned.

i would have to google it, and i'd rather not do that for you.

Users are generally not interested in meeting standards; they just want their solution.

@Tinkeringbell if they're canned and pre-vetted by mods, there is no room for (idk if I'm using the right word) abuse